vovat: (Bast)

I've been feeling pretty lethargic recently, and haven't even felt like playing video games that much. I have done a few things in the past few weeks that are probably worth talking about, though. It was Beth's mom's birthday on the twenty-fifth of last month, and we visited and went to the zoo in Bridgeton, where I felt the need to pose with animal statues.

Beth was wearing her Frasier hat, so I tried to get a picture of her with some cranes, but it didn't come out very well. There were several peacocks wandering around the place.

One of the lemurs was sitting on a sliding board.

These pigs with long ears and tails were interesting.

And they had some leopards and tigers that reminded me of our cats in a few respects.

Black cats usually remind me of panthers. I believe black panthers are actually leopards, but cougars are also sometimes called panthers. These designations aren't always that specific. One of the lemurs And my mother-in-law shoved me into a lion fountain. Somehow, I survived.


On the first of this month, we saw Scott Thompson perform as Buddy Cole at the City Winery, which is a pretty inconvenient venue, but they've had a few things we've been interested in.

The last show we saw there was John Waters, and while Scott is younger, they both came from a time when being gay was much more dangerous and subversive, and seem somewhat bemused by that community today. Then on that Thursday, we saw a Kevin Geeks Out show at the Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg. It was about advertising, with topics including how slogans are used in movies and television, with Kevin Maher mentioning that he thought there would be more characters using them as one-liners when killing somebody. He made up for it with a video of various Arnold Schwarzenegger kill scenes with somewhat relevant slogans dubbed in. Steve Young, a former writer for David Letterman, had two segments, one on collectible playing cards advertising local businesses, often with bizarrely lazy art; and another on records of stock clips and jingles to play in radio commercials. On our way back to the subway, I noticed some art by Molly Crabapple, who did a lot of work for Max Fractal (formerly Kim Boekbinder), and whose book I own.

Our next show was EXTC at (Le) Poisson Rouge in Manhattan last Thursday.

I believe the concept started when Terry Chambers, the drummer for XTC on their first five albums and a bit of the sixth, did some shows with Colin Moulding. Colin isn't part of the touring band now, but Terry still plays, and the set includes songs from after Terry had left the band. It's done with the blessing of Andy Partridge, who stopped playing live after a panic attack in 1982. The rest of the band consists of Steve Hampton on lead vocals and guitar, and Terry Lines on bass and backing vocals.

The songs were all performed quite closely to the studio recordings. Steve didn't replicate all of Andy's vocal oddities, but I'm not sure Andy could anymore either. It was a fun time. I bought a CD there, but I haven't listened to it yet.


I'll also mention that I got my sketchbook from Becca Whitaker, whom I've known online for a long time, and it's full of colorful pin-ups based on popular media. There's a section of cereal mascots, which is up my alley even though I don't eat a lot of cereal. Mermaids and horror icons are also well-represented. For my copy, she drew Artemis and Jack Pumpkinhead.

And today, I received these from Vylirium.

There's a lot of cool art online, and I haven't really put any of it on display, despite having lived in the same place for almost seven years. I need to clean up first, and it's difficult to get motivated. You'd think being able to decorate would BE the motivation, but I guess we're back to the lethargy again.
vovat: (Jenny Lewis)

My aunt died on the fifteenth, and we drove down to Virginia for the funeral this past weekend. I hadn't seen her in a while, not since my grandmother's funeral about six years ago. And this was just a few months after my mom died. My Aunt Toni was the oldest, four years older than my mom. And today is actually my mom's birthday, so that's weird. The funeral was yesterday at a small church, and I believe it was a natural burial as well. This hasn't been a great year so far in several respects.

I had originally thought we would drive the entire way down on Saturday, but I changed my mind and booked a motel in Maryland, which turned out to be a good idea. Driving gets so tedious. The motel still used actual keys instead of cards, and it had pictures of animals up in the room.

For some reason, the toilet paper was in front of a zebra.

I would think they should have at least used zebra-striped paper in this case. The motel also had real animals, as we saw three cats in a window near the office, and I think the people staying there also had a dog.

The next day, we went to a café in Baltimore, and drove by a book and music store that looked interesting because it had a big stuffed Heathcliff with a banjolele in the window.

There were other decorations inside, and we ended up buying four used books between us.

Across the street was this tea shop with a giant carrot stuck through it, or at least that was what it was made to look like.

That evening, we ate at the Longhorn Steakhouse with some of my relatives and other people. I don't think I've been to one of them before, although I get it confused with the Texas Roadhouse and Lone Star Steakhouse. I'm pretty sure that last one doesn't exist anymore. Regardless, I liked it, and they gave large portions. I had chicken instead of steak, though.

In terms of other stuff that might be worth mentioning, we visited the Brooklyn Botanic Garden on Wednesday the sixteenth. A few of the cherry trees were blooming, but most of them were still bare.

The magnolias by the conservatory were in blossom, however. And I noticed this Shinto-style shrine at the Japanese Hill and Pond Garden for the first time.

We were at Beth's mom's house for Easter weekend, but didn't really do anything for it, although she did give us Easter baskets, and we ate at the Olive Garden.

And last Tuesday, we saw John Waters at the City Winery in Manhattan, and that was pretty enjoyable. It was his seventy-ninth birthday that day, which means he outlived my mom and aunt.
vovat: (Default)

Yesterday, Beth and I met up with Tavie and Sean on Coney Island (or should that be "IN Coney Island"?) to go to the New York Aquarium. Neither Beth nor I had ever been, although we'd been to other aquariums as kids. One thing I noticed compared to what I'd remembered was the lack of really big animals. I guess that's because of the backlash against places like Sea World or the Mall of America keeping them in tanks that were way too small for them to live comfortably. They do normally have penguins, which also sounds kind of cruel, especially in the summer; but the exhibit was undergoing maintenance that day. I wonder where they keep the penguins in the meantime. I didn't realize that there were outside exhibits, which is probably part of why I didn't wear sunscreen and ended up being burned all over my head and arms. It was overcast and rained on and off, but I guess that didn't matter. There were a few seals outside, but they stayed underwater most of the time, so I didn't get any good pictures.

One of them was tagged with a number, and the guide explained that this was because he kept breaking into an enclosure for endangered fish in California before they sent him across the country. I believe it was Tavie who pointed out how strange it was that the seals were now living so close to the ocean, but not in it. Inside, there were quite a few rays and small sharks.

There was also a Japanese Skull Crab, which I somehow totally missed the first time I looked at the tank.

The aquarium had one of those theaters where they provided 3-D glasses and the seats were wired to vibrate and such, where we watched a short film about sharks, including the wobbegong, nurse, and Great White. I remember a book on sharks and whales I had as a kid that I used to look at a fair amount, and I found the hammerhead shark particularly fascinating. I recall generally being more interested in whales than sharks, though. After the aquarium, we ate at Gargiulo's, an Italian restaurant not on but near the Boardwalk, where Beth and I had been once before. I wasn't going to say I didn't eat any seafood, but then I remembered we had a shared appetizer of tiny baked clams. I used to think I didn't like clams, but I've since found that they're pretty good; it just seems like they're often gritty. We've now visited Coney Island twice this year and still haven't ridden any rides. I'd like to go back when it isn't so oppressively hot and crowded, but that might never happen.
vovat: (Polychrome)

Beth, her Uncle John, and I went to the Philadelphia Flower Show on Friday. It was our first time going, and it was different from usual this year as it was mostly outside in FDR Park instead of at the convention center. And Beth and I no longer live in the Philadelphia area, although our families still do. I didn't really expect so many shops, but I guess there's no reason there shouldn't have been. They were selling some pretty cool stuff. I'm less keen on the corporate sponsorship, but that might have been necessary to fund the event. Stuff was spread out throughout the park, and one building had recently developed plants and dioramas of a sort that incorporated a lot of plants.

Another area, the Enchanted Forest, had fantastic creatures and scenes made largely out of plant material.

I particularly liked this troll-like entity. I didn't get a picture of the sign, so I don't remember what the official name was.

And there was a tent full of butterflies, where before going in they gave us Q-Tips with sugar water. There were so many people going through that I suspect most of them were already full, so we didn't attract any hungry butterflies. No, we attracted the horny butterflies. There were these two mating ones that landed on Beth and climbed up her blouse and over her head.

Uncle John nudged them with his Q-Tip, and they fluttered over to me instead.

After the show, we ate at Ruby Tuesday. I'm not actually sure about the mask rules for restaurants now; I still try to wear one until I actually get food, but it doesn't seem like most other diners are bothering with that. This was in New Jersey, and I know the rules are different everywhere. I've never liked wearing a mask; it's uncomfortable and an extra thing to worry about. But at the same time I don't trust my own judgment when it comes to medical issues. It's annoying that so much of that is left up to politicians pandering to people who think they know better than pathologists. I've seen articles about public gatherings in New York City basically going back to how they were before the pandemic, yet at the same time you still have to wear a mask on the subway. A little consistency might be nice. I've grown to dislike the term "reopening," both because a lot of stuff never actually closed, and because I've come to think of that as Trumpian rhetoric, the Republican suggestion that the best way to keep small businesses alive was to keep them open with the virus going around rather than to just give them financial assistance while it was too dangerous to operate normally. I kind of liked having an excuse to stay home. I just wish this excuse didn't also lead to a bunch of deaths.

I'm now working in the office every other weekday, and trying to practice guitar and play Animal Crossing every day, at least when I can. I'm still taking guitar lessons once a week, although the schedule is complicated somewhat by work. We've gotten up to power chords in the book I'm working from. I've been trying to branch out a bit into other music, but when only the chords are shown, I'm never really sure what rhythm to play. With my teacher's help and some easy guitar notation on the They Might Be Giants Wiki, I have the beginning of "Ana Ng" written out. I've worked a little on the Monkees' "Listen to the Band," but while most of it is pretty simple chords, there are a few barre chords, and I can't quite manage to get the proper sound out of those. 
vovat: (Minotaur)

Sunday was our last day at Walt Disney World, and we visited the only remaining park (not counting the water parks), Animal Kingdom. It looks like I didn't really say much about this one on my last visit. While the actual animals are obviously a major part of the draw, it also incorporates a fair number of imaginary and extinct animals, the latter being showcased in Dino Land U.S.A.

The first thing we did at the park was watch It's Tough to Be a Bug at the Tree of Life, then use our FastPass for the ride simply called Dinosaur, to tie in with the 2000 movie that I'm not sure anyone remembers now. A lot of the rides have narratives that they present before and during the action, and in this case it's Wallace Langham wanting to bring back an iguanodon from the very end of the Cretaceous Period before the meteor strike that killed the dinosaurs, against the wishes of his boss, Phylicia Rashad. Why is he willing to risk his job, and possibly the lives of passengers, to bring back this one particular dinosaur when he could easily try to take one from a less dangerous time? I'm sure I'm overthinking it, but that's what I do. Our next FastPass was for Expedition Everest, but since that was close by and we had some time, we rode the TriceraTop Spin. Each triceratops that passengers ride has two switches, one in the front to raise and lower the dinosaur, and one in the back to tilt it.

Expedition Everest is, as far as I could tell, the same as it was before, but that's fine as it's a lot of fun. It features one of the imaginary animals, a yeti. Other fictional animals are presumably seen in the Pandora section, but we didn't get the chance to go there. I've never seen Avatar anyway, but I've heard the rides are good. We walked on a trail to see some animals, and rode on the African-themed safari tram.

I couldn't get good pictures of all the animals, the elephant being one who eluded me, as was the nursing baby giraffe. It's hard when the tram is pretty much always in motion. There were a few rhinoceroses quite close to the vehicle.

I also got a pretzel shaped like Rafiki's drawing of Simba.


None of us got pictures with costumed characters this time around, but I would have liked to if we'd been less pressed for time. While entering Dino Land, we saw Scrooge McDuck and Launchpad, who would have been pretty exciting to pose with, but they weren't even meeting people at that point, just walking from one place to another. There were a lot of meet-and-greet areas where the lines weren't that long, though. Maybe next time, if there is one.

We ended up having to call a Lyft from Animal Kingdom, as the bus back to our hotel wasn't showing up, and we needed to get back to take the Magical Express to the airport. So that kind of sucked, but the flight and all that went off without a hitch.
vovat: (Bast)
Beth and I had been meaning to visit the Prospect Park Zoo for a while, since it's nearby and we have free admission for a year (only a few more months now) with the NYC ID.

We finally got around to it on Monday, which I had off from my temp job for Eid al-Adha even though I'm not Muslim. It's a very small zoo without a lot of animals, and none that are particularly big. They were highlighting their two sea lions, both female, which are generally much smaller than the males. Why have I never heard the term "sea lioness"? I guess gender-specific nouns are kind of on their way out in modern language. We saw a feeding, at which the trainers make the sea lions do tricks and then give them fish.

Some of the tricks were used to assess their health, but I couldn't help thinking how annoying it would be to have to do tricks during lunchtime. Or maybe that's their equivalent of having a job. I know some people think zoos are cruel in general, and I can't say they're totally wrong, although some of the animals are probably having better lives there than they would in the wild. It depends on the specific circumstances; it's a pretty common opinion now that Sea World treats its orcas terribly, but I don't know if it's hurting their business. Really, though, one of the main things I noticed about this zoo was how parents either didn't watch their kids or encouraged them to cause trouble. Some parents were holding up their kids to the glass of an exhibit, and the children were banging on it. I have to suspect that scares the animals even more than they're already terrified by being stared at all day. I have a little more sympathy for the kids who run around, because that's probably what I would have done as a kid. Still, after the big news story about the kid who climbed into the gorilla cage, you'd think parents would be a lot more careful at zoos. Kids acting up while animals mind their own business is some of the most obvious metaphorical behavior I've come across. The strange thing is that being at zoos and other places that people like to bring their kids actually sometimes makes me wish I DID have kids to take there, so that they could do the things I can't. I did manage to squeeze into a turtle shell for a photograph that's now my Facebook profile picture, but I'm too big to, say, crawl around in the prairie dog town.

Don't worry; I'm not having kids. There are just times when it might be fun to borrow some. Or maybe not. After the zoo, we ate at Junior's for the first time, and I still have some apple crumb cheesecake left over.

On Wednesday evening, we went out to a bar to see a friend of ours who's moving back to Texas. It seemed like there was a time when everyone we knew was moving to New York, and now they're all leaving. Okay, not that many people are leaving, although one of our other friends was discussing the possibility. Anyway, we spent some time at a bar, which was all right even though I generally think bars are too noisy. I wonder how much business a quiet bar that encourages patrons to talk to each other would get. Actually, I've been in a few, but I don't remember which ones they were. We pretty much never go to bars except when someone else we know has invited us there, or there's a concert we want to see. When we got home that day, our cat Reagan ran outside onto the stoop. I've had cats who would try this pretty much anytime you opened the door, but ours usually don't. Beth was able to chase her back into the apartment, but I wish there were some way to tell her we don't approve. I remember reading somewhere that cats sometimes respond to rewards but never to punishments, and I had to wonder if a cat wrote it. And really, if any cat were going to try living outside, one who demands constant human attention and food would be about the last one who should try it. I've had outdoor cats before, but I don't think I ever will again. I've also had a cat who was killed by a car. As with the zoo animals, I feel kind of bad for keeping them cooped up inside all the time, but they usually seem to be fairly content.
vovat: (Kabumpo)
My birthday was last Wednesday. I usually find birthdays to be a little bit of a let-down, because I feel I should be doing something really fun, and generally just end up sitting around. Beth and I did eat at the Olive Garden on the previous night, which I like, even if a lot of people don't. And on the actual day, we went to Denny's with her mom and Uncle John. Presents I received included Kinks albums from my in-laws, and a Donald Duck comic book from Tavie. Beth paid for part of a new computer, and this is the first post I'm writing on it. It didn't come with Microsoft Office, though, so I guess I'm going to have to buy that separately. Do you think it will go on sale on Black Friday or Cyber Monday?


On Friday, I saw Robyn Hitchcock at the City Winery, where I always feel kind of weird because I don't particularly like wine, nor can I afford it. But then, I pretty much never buy any food or drinks at concert venues unless they have a minimum. He has so many songs that I never recognize all of them, but the set did include several I know well, including "Victorian Squid," "I Used to Say I Love You," and "Trams of Old London." While I don't know it quite as well, I also appreciated hearing "Old Pervert" from the Soft Boys era. He had some good introductions, and mentioned that all of his songs are either inane or suicidal. It was largely his bizarre lyrics that drew me to his music, although those aren't necessarily enough to make the songs good. Fortunately, he also has strong melodies. Of the ones for which I don't own the recordings, the one that stood out for me was about his dad and a trolley bus. Why does it seem like all English creative types write about how their fathers were kind of distant? An Australian singer named Emma Swift sang harmony on a few songs. It was actually the second show of the night, as the first sold out before I could buy a ticket. At one point, Robyn said he wished all his shows could be second shows, which is the sort of absurd humor I enjoy.

Beth and I went to the Bronx Zoo on Saturday. We were able to get free year-long memberships with our NYC ID cards, but we'd been putting off going there because of how early they close at this time of year. We only spend two and a half hours there, but I'm sure we'll go back at some point. Our passes also work for other zoos in the city.

Tigers act so much like domestic cats. Like, they'll just flop down and start grooming themselves.


Hello, Mr. Zebra.

Feeding time for the giraffes
vovat: (wart)
My dad and his wife Phyllis rented a place in Ocean City (the one in New Jersey) for the week, so [livejournal.com profile] bethje and I went down there to stay with them. We had also made a veterinary appointment for the cats, and we still take them to a vet down near her mom's house, so we brought them down there. That meant I had to take the bus down to South Jersey, bring my car back up, then drive back down with the cats. We looked into a rental car, but they're prohibitively expensive in New York. I'm going to need to keep my car in Brooklyn for a little while before driving back down to pick up my first pair of glasses. I've discovered recently that I've become near-sighted, although it didn't hit me until my mid-thirties. The cats seem to be all right. Today is actually Wally's twelfth birthday.

We didn't do all that much in Ocean City other than hang around the house and walk on the boardwalk, but that was all right. Yesterday, we went down to Cape May, which I don't believe I'd visited in the past nineteen years. We visited the zoo down there, and saw such interesting things as:

Zebra butts


A black bear cracking and eating nuts

One turtle sexually harassing another turtle

Beth kissing a cow and the cow kissing her back (this is the cow in question, but I didn't get a Kiss Cam picture)

Lions being lazy

And a squirrel stealing a macaw's food

I have more pictures up at Flickr. Does anyone else even use Flickr these days? I guess I could have just uploaded everything to Facebook, but that seemed a little awkward. I took these with my regular digital camera, which I largely stopped using when I got a cell phone that took decent pictures. Now all the pictures it takes look blurry, so I brought the camera back. The Wally one was from my phone, however, and it came out all right with the flash.

After the zoo, we had dinner at the Lobster House, which is apparently quite popular. I'm sure I'll never go back there, since it's so expensive and all, but it was very tasty. I had shrimp scampi over linguini, and Beth crab-stuffed shrimp. I tried a little of hers, and I liked it better than mine.
I haven't taken a survey in a long time, and I saw this one on [livejournal.com profile] slfcllednowhere's journal, so I might as well close with this:
Read more... )

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